Winning With the Petroff

by Anatoly Karpov

Truly like new. See my ratings.

Genres: Chess

114 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1993

About the author

Russian chess master Anatoly Yevgenyevich Karpov ranked from 1975 as world champion to 1985.

Garry Kasparov defeated this official grand doctor. From 1986, he played three matches against Kasparov for the title to 1990. After Kasparove broke away from Fédération Internationale des Échecs in 1993, he then held its title once again. He held the title but in protest against new rules resigned in 1999. Many consider Karpov of the greatest players of all time for his decades-long standing among the elite.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoly...

Reviews

[Manny · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're not a chess player, you won't appreciate quite how strange the title of this book is. The Petroff is Black's most conservative defense to 1. e4. It is extremely hard to crack, but gives negligible winning chances, and spectators often groan inwardly when they see it played in top-level matches; the most likely result is yet another quick draw. Some columnists have gone as far as to say that it will eventually kill chess altogether. Since Anatoly Karpov is a former World Champion, and played the Petroff many times during his extremely distinguished career, he obviously knows this better than any of us.

So... "Winning with the Petroff". I suppose the publishers told him that "Drawing Safely with the Petroff" wasn't going to sell many copies. But I'm still a little surprised that he allowed them to get the last word.

[Justin Pickett · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is less an opening book than a thematic (in the Petroff) collection of well-annotated (by Karpov) games played by some of the all-time greatest players (Kasparov, Karpov, Anand). The book lacks coverage of many modern lines of the Petroff, and it also provides inadequate coverage of some of the older ones (e.g., the Cochrane gambit). So, don't buy this as an opening manual. Buy it as a game collection.

It bears noting that Nigel Short said this about the book in his own book, Winning (p. 95): "Anatoly Karpov, the alleged author of the undoubtedly ghost-written Winning With the Petroff."